MANCHESTER – Ribbon cuttings for new parks are always a special occasion but the one involving Mayor Joseph Hankins and AristaCare staff, featured a ceremony that took place inside.
The grand opening for Nostalgia Park concerned a new sensory room that clients of the AristiCare Facility can enjoy and provides a tranquil environment featuring stuffed animals, baby dolls, squeezable rubber creatures and a ceiling that resembles the sky with a few fluffy white clouds.
Among the staff present for the recently held special occasion were AristiCare Executive Director Robert Greenberger, Administrator Joshua Teitelbaum, Nostalgia Park Coordinators Maria Ferreira and Lisette Vasquez plus Activities Director Jessica Cowell all of whom were very excited about the completion of the project and its kick off that afternoon.
“It took us almost a year to get all the supplies and to set it all up,” Cowell said.
She noted that prior to its transformation, it was a regular sitting room. It was underutilized. Long ago, they used to have a sensory room, so they began the plan to bring it back.
“This is a good spot not only for the confused residents but a good spot for some of the alert residents who get a little overwhelmed during the day to come over and decompress. There are different projector lights that shine. There are tap lights that they can use and curtain lights that change color. Everything has a texture to it. We have the aroma therapy on one side. Every part of the room is set to engage them,” she added.
In order to make it a park, it needed a tree and that task wasn’t too hard. A number of colorful Care Bears adorn the tree.
Cowell explained, “the tree we have here is the one from our pumpkin contest from last Halloween so we repurposed it. All of our stuffed animals are state funded from a state project called furry friends and they sent us 28 of these. We have a dog and cat.” The animals are interactive and make sounds and respond to the clients.
“They stay on and then they go into night mode and once they are in night mode the battery stays but motion will reactivate them,” Cowell said.
“What do you think of this room?” one of the coordinators asked a client.
“I don’t think much of it,” he responded.
“What about this? You got to love this,” the coordinator responded, continuing to engage him. “You can’t say no to this,” she said as she carefully handed him a baby doll.
“That isn’t a baby,” he said. His reaction was a bit different when he was presented with one of the stuffed animal dogs. He hugged the dog. “He’s amazing.” The puppy’s name is Anthony.
No park would complete without some ducks and Nostalgia Park has some rubber duckies.
Greenberger has watched not only the evolution of the sensory room but the entire unit.
“Dementia patients are in a certain sense the most vulnerable but really the hardest to give the care that they need,” he said. “You are dealing with a lifetime of an experience.”
The person they are today is a result of their entire lives, relationships with others, and relationship to themselves, he said. “You also have behaviors and to deal with those behaviors you can medicate which is an easy way out or you can do an investigation and what talks to this patient.”
“Why are they falling? Why are they agitated? How could we get to know them in a way that we train our staff and when they do interact with them, they are de-escalating. I could start a conversation about things that are interesting to me because I know myself but you have to get them to talk about what they are interested in,” Greenberger explained.
“We have put together with the team a goal to get to know the patients individually and to really be person centric here. Covid came and destroyed everything because you couldn’t do that and we also lost so much staff. It was such a turnaround,” he added.
“Months ago I told Maria (Nostalgia Park Coordinator Maria Ferreira) I need you back and I need you to take the reins of this program. Mr. T (Joshua Teitelbaum) – who is the chief executive of this building, and Maria – we sat together and I said lets rebuild Nostalgia Park to be unique and special and this room is a visual of the concept we were trying to create.”
Greenberger said “You don’t know how to interact with a patient, you aren’t going to start reading a book so we rolled out a process with a little board behind the bed that has key pictures and information you need to know about the patients.”
“Like if they like baseball,” Ferreira said. “Their favorite team, if they have a nickname, how many children they have. Little things about the resident that if they are able to communicate, we can get the one on one with that resident. From there every staff member who goes into that room little by little you can break through.”
Mayor Joseph Hankins cut the ribbon with the ceremonial enlarged scissors and refreshments were served as residents entered the room to hold the dolls, enjoy calming music and take in the new facility as if they were walking in one of the township’s many parks.
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